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One of the hardest things for traditional marketers exploring social media to get a handle on is the ways in which they are, and are not, marketing channels. A couple of recent items raise some of the issues quite nicelky.

In The Problem with Social Media Marketing, Joshua Porter points out that social media do not get your message out into the world in the way that marketers usually like to think about - they amplify the messages that are out there (whether they are yours or your customers’):

Giving people a platform for expression doesn’t necessarily create buzz and demand. It only amplifies what the opinion was in the first place.

In other words, if you give people a platform for expression and:

• If your product sucks, the resulting conversation will be about how much it sucks.

• If your product is great, the resulting conversation will be about how great it is.

In other words, it’s better to think of social media tools as amplifying customer opinion rather than improving it.

You can’t simply set up social media tools and expect your business to get better. You have to change your business for your business to get better.

It’s Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae concept: you can’t slap social media on top of marketing efforts that are trying to overcome real problems with your product, service, delivery, or organization. You’ll just make those problems more obvious.

Chris Brogan often talks about the intersection of social media and marketing from a non-marketer’s point of view. In this post he talks about the importance of understanding the rules of social media:

Marketers Can Do Magic on Social Networks… But only smart ones. Those who choose to roll their existing methods onto the web will find themselves writing articles in magazines about how the web is a horrible place to market. For the rest of you (and I mostly mean YOU), this is a great place to start out learning, and then grow into being a transplant to this new community. In no time, you’ll be one of the gang, and hopefully, the metrics that matter most to your organization will be growing in the right ways, by way of your efforts.

Chris has lots more to say about the things you need to learn in the social networking world, and rather than repeat it I’ll just suggest you go over there and read some of it. And here’s this marketer’s take on it.

Marketers like to try new things, but mostly, what we’re really doing is trying new ways to do old things. Once upon a time (which I can remember quite well) we made brochures to tell our customers about what we did; now we make web sites. It’s better, faster, more flexible, and more convenient for everybody, but it was the same thing. Once upon a time, we ran ads in magazines and trade pubs and on billboards and the broadcast media to tell the world what we did; now we run search ads and banner ads and while it’s more cost-effective and better targeted, it’s still the same thing. Once upon a time we sent out direct mail, but now we’d rather send email; but we’re still selecting an audience and tuning our segmentation and messages and calls to action and offers. It’s the same process, adapted for a new medium.

Social media are not new medium for the same activities; they’ve got their own dynamics and rules and strengths and weaknesses for the things marketers want to accomplish. You’ve got to understand them to use them. And you’ve got to realize that just as nobody watches television in hopes of seeing ads, or goes to their mailbox in hopes of getting direct mail, your audience is not using social media because they’re eager to talk to your company.

If you approach them as a faster/better/cheaper alternative to your other marketing channels, you’re unlikely to succeed. And I don’t mean “gosh, that was disappointing” failure, I mean “wow, we made some people hate us” failure.

Except that social media are marketing channels.

But it’s never that simple. As Mary Schmidt often points out on her blog, everything is marketing, from the behavior of your receptionist to the greeting people get when they call your support line the things you already think of as marketing. So while social media aren’t just new marketing channels, the way your organization is discussed and your people behave on them are indeed part of your marketing.

Even if you, the marketers, aren’t participating at all. Somebody is - your employees, your customers, your dealers.

That’s why it’s important for you to get involved with them - just as its important that you not treat them as just a new way to spread your messages onto passive targets.

I wrote a brief note about some blog comment tracking systems a while ago: these are sites that let you monitor the conversation in the comments section of a blog post. I just mentioned a few, but Chris Brogan gives the topic a deserved more in depth look this week:

My thought is that RSS as a communications medium, while being wholly responsible for all the good and wonderful and magical things that have come to the web over the last 5 or 6 years, might need an upgrade. Why? Because I want the comment flow. I want to be part of the back and forth of the conversation under the hood.

Yes, I understand that some blogging platforms have a separate RSS feed for comments, but is that the right solution to the problem? I don’t think so. I think it has to be something more robust, and maybe with a toggle.

The most important first steps for getting involved in social media is joining the conversation; while it’s great that you can do blog searches and save them as RSS feed and keep up with what people are saying about your topics of interest and your organization, it’s not enough.

The conversation might start with a blog post, but it continues in the comments. And on Twitter. And all over the place. The tools for keeping track of blogs (RSS and Atom and the various readers) are very nice. The tools for the rest of it are a lot less refined.

Here’s what I would love to see: an integrated way of following all of this. I don’t mean any of the various social media monitoring systems that have been designed for organizations; those can be great. I mean essentially NewsGator or Google Reader for the whole online universe, designed for the individual. Oh, yeah, and can it be free please?

Or is it out there? What are the best pieces of the solution floating around? Let’s have a conversation about that…

Last week I gave a Social Media 101 talk at a conference, and at the beginning of the session I asked attendees about their current use of social media. A number of people were blogging or using social networks, but when I got to Twitter, one person in a room of fifty raised his hand.

It’s easy for those of us who are immersed in this stuff to forget that most people have never touched something like Twitter. So I offer the “How to Twitter (and get something out of it)” guide for those who haven’t taken the plunge and perhaps aren’t even sure if they should bother.

Those of you who are already among the Twitterati may want to skip it. Or, better yet, consider adding your two cents for Twitter newcomers.

What is this Twitter, anyway?

Twitter is a way to exchange brief (up to 140 character) messages with a selected group of contacts via web, IM, SMS, or specialized client software. Think of it as microblogging - short messages that a group of your subscribers (or folowers) can read, and which you can read from people you’ve chosen to follow.

That describes how it works, but not the essence of it. It is, in some respects, kind of like a slow motion chat room - you see the latest “tweets” from your group of contacts. Conversations start and continue, sometimes over minutes and sometimes over hours. You can also have one-on-one conversations with or without the rest of the Twitter world seeing them.

What does this let you do? Well, you can tell people about your latest blog post, speaking engagement, white paper, or just a thought. You can ask questions - and you’ll often get interesting responses. (I like to say that Twitter is like shouting out into the great void of the universe… and sometimes the universe answers back!)

Why would I want to do this?

I was a big Twitter skeptic when it first appeared. First, there was my inherent skepticism about any big new thing. Second, it sounded like a massive source of constant interruption (and yes, it can be). Third, there were the silly claims that it would revolutionize marketing; for a while I was seeing endless blog posts about the fabulous marketing activities that could take place over Twitter, most of which were things that could be done more easily and effectively other ways. (I still think Twitter is not a marketing channel in any strict sense.)

But I tried it, because I felt like I needed to understand it, and - surprise! - have found a lot of value in it. I’ve found answers to technical questions. I’ve used it to get some quick feedback on ideas. Sometimes it’s just an entertaining way to see what people are thinking about. It’s not scientific, it’s not a survey vehicle, and it doesn’t replace marketing research, but it can get you thinking - or help you figure out that odd computer problem or find out about a great new place to have dinner.

Perhaps the best reason for you to try Twitter, though, is that it’s out there, it’s growing, and you need to understand it. So even if it never becomes part of your routine, you should have a look simply to know what it is about.

Getting started…

Having figured all this out through trial and error, here are some practical tips on getting going with Twitter and actually getting some value out of it.

1. Create a Twitter account.

Go to the Twitter site and create an account. It’s free and easy. Use a name or nickname. I don’t recommend using an organization name - this is a social medium in which people connect to people, not companies or organizations. You should certainly put your organizational affiliation(s) and links to your blog or site on your profile page, but put a human face on yourself - you are a person!

The profile is brief and easy to fill out. I think it’s a good idea to customize it with a photo or image, but I wouldn’t get hung up on page backgrounds or anything like that; you can play with that later if you want. (In fact, many Twitterers will hardly ever see your page, anyway.)

2. Follow people.

It’s people that give Twitter value, so you need to follow some. If you have friends who Twitter, add them. You can search for names and Twitter handles. Many of us have Twitter feeds on the sidebars of our blogs.

Here’s my advice on following: follow everyone you have any interest in. You need to reach a certain critical mass for Twitter to become interesting and useful, so when in doubt, follow. You can always remove people later.

I should note that I was initially quite resistant to that approach, and was very selective about following anybody at first. But once I started being more generous about clicking that Follow button, the whole thing became more useful. Go for it, you can always prune your list later.

The people you follow will get an email telling them that you’re out there listening. They may follow you back. I usually follow anyone who follows me (at least at first). I usually do not follow anything that appears to be an organization or company Twitter feed - sorry, not interested.

Oh, and feel free to follow me - my Twitter name is bythebayou.

3. See who your friends are talking to.

When you return to the Twitter page, you’ll see a timeline of all the tweets from your group of contacts. Some of them will be straightforward messages. Some will be directed at specific people. For example, if someone is responding to me or wants to direct something to me, they’ll start the message with “@bythebayou.”

Click those names, and you’ll see a timeline of just that person’s tweets. If they look at all interesting, click the follow button!

4. Talk back.

Don’t hesitate to join conversations. Answer a question. Ask one. You’ll get a sense of the tone of your group of contacts. Don’t be shy.

5. Keep up.

Now for something practical: how do you keep on top of this? You can simply return to the Twitter site, and see the updated timeline, but that is a bit of a pain in the neck. However, you have options.

My method of reading Twitter is through third-party client software: a program you put on your computer that gives you a constantly-refreshed stream of tweets, and makes it easy to send your own. Think of an IM client just for Twitter. I use Twhirl, available for Mac or PC. Twitterific for the Mac is also nice. I can’t really offer any advice on Windows clients (maybe someone else can in the comments), but Twitter offers a list of third party clients you can look at.

In your Twitter settings, you can select some other ways to keep up with your Twitter stream. One is to send tweets to your instant messaging account. I tried this and found it annoying; for me, IM is a place for private conversations. You can also send them to you phone via SMS, something I have not done and don’t intend to, because it sounds like a great way to be constantly annoyed by a chirping phone, and run up the mobile bill as well. When I’m not at my desk, I look at Twitter via Thincloud, a neat iPhone optimized web interface.

When I started I added the RSS feed of my Twitter timeline to my feed reader, but found this pretty useless; Twitter is real time, RSS is not, so I found I was looking at large numbers of old tweets. I’d missed what was going on. I don’t recommend this, even as RSS-centric as I am.

Try some things and find what works for you.

6. Some conventions you should know about.

I’ve already mentioned the @ convention for directing a tweet to a particular person. Remember that these replies are visible to the public - the @ is really just a way to point out that you’re replying.

You can also send direct messages via Twitter - these are private messages that only the recipient sees. Just send “d [username]” and your message text. (Many clients, including Twhirl, have handy buttons for doing this.

Tweet away!

As I said up top, if you’re involved in social media you should understand Twitter, and that alone is a good reason to dive in. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find. If nothing else, you’ll be ready the day somebody says, “Hey, should we be doing something with Twitter?”

I haven’t touched on another important topic, Twitter search tools; this is long already, and it’s a meaty topic. I’ll get to that in some future post.

See you on Twitter, I hope!

Friends know that I am not a big fan of business books. In fact, one of my favorite business books every is the The Witch Doctors, which talks about why most business books are nonsense. That said, I do read them - one must keep up, right - and sometimes they are valuable. Meatball Sundae is one of those useful ones.

Why? First, because it’s a very, very quick read. And while there are all kinds of interesting observations and anecdotes in it, there’s also one big and important idea: you can’t stick social media on top of old-style products and expect good results.

Godin is of course overly dramatic about it and makes lots of sweeping statements for emphasis, because that’s his style; reality is not quite as clean-cut as he makes it sound. But for anybody who’s been asked, “But how can I use social media to sell more of my toilet paper,” it’s a good read. Take it on your next plane trip (but not an international flight, because you’ll finish it long before you get to your destination).

A question for readers: does anyone use Squidoo? Godin flogs it quite a bit, as he does in a lot of his writing, and I’m just curious what real experience folks have had with it.

The Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau has a new site up that aims to tell the story of Houston - and why it’s such a great place to live or to visit - by letting Houstonians talk about why they love their city.

A great concept, right? Especially in Houston, a city that gets little respect from the rest of the country - we know you think we’re just a big old mess of freeways and billboards on top of a flood plain - but whose residents are for the most part bursting with civic pride. Nobody can tell you what makes Houston an amazing place to live as well as an ordinary Houstonian. It doesn’t take much to get us to start bending your ear about our great food, the fantastic diversity of our people, our great folk art scene, and most importantly the “you can do anything” spirit that drives the place. (OK, I’ll stop now.)

That’s what makes the CVB’s site such a disappointment. It’s called “myHouston” but sorry, neighbors - it’s not your Houston. It’s their Houston - in this case, a selected parade of celebrities, politicians, and other public figures talking about why they like Houston.

Not that there’s anything wrong with having celebrities talk about Houston, but just think of how much better this site would be if a Houstonian visiting it could click a link to add why she loves being here. Think of how much more authentic and convincing it would be if you didn’t just see that George and Barbara Bush think the people here are great, but also that Sue from New York moved here and the entrepreneurial spirit of the city helped her start a business, that Bill came from the west coast and found a culinary wonderland, that Javier the artist from LA discovered that Houston’s cost of living made it possible for him to focus on his craft and move his career forward, that Jane thinks the productions at Opera in the Heights are great… and so on.

Along with the steady stream of new content, it would be easy to add much more. A Houston wiki could turn into a great visitor or new resident resource as Houstonians add content about the best food, the best ice house, the must-see attractions, and so on. The site could become a fantastic resource for finding your way around this gigantic city, with the information supplied by the people who know it best.

Our tartly-written local real estate blog, Swamplot, sums it up quite accurately:

The Greater Houston Convention and Visitor Bureau’s celebrity-laden “My Houston” campaign hits the web!!! And it sure looks a lot like Facebook or MySpace, doesn’t it? All the kewl kids are on it, like Beyonce, and Yao, and AJ, and George and Barbara, and Chloe, and Yolanda. And they’re all saying great things about your city!!!

Only . . . there doesn’t seem to be a way to post your own page. Or add your comments to theirs. Or participate in any way.

All those local celebrities? They are not your friends. Clay and Brian and Hilary are not in your extended network.

Loser.

Here’s what makes the CVB’s failure to use social media even worse: the idea was right in front of them, because someone else - frustrated with a long history of CVB campaigns that made Houston sound like a boring place - already did a small version of it.

Houston, It’s Worth It (HIWI) was started a few years ago by some local marketers as a way to let Houstonians tell the real story of Houston. The name comes from the idea that yes, Houston is crowded and muggy and has bad traffic and giant bugs, and it’s still an amazing place. And rather than tell the world why, they let ordinary Houstonians post their thoughts on the subject. And people did, leaving comment after comment on the site about why they love it here. It became a local sensation.

When asked about the project, the director of the CVB at the time (since departed) said he thought it was a bad idea to talk about the city’s negatives.

And there we have the ultimate social media versus old marketing story. In old marketing, you can try to gloss over things you don’t like; in social media, you really can’t avoid them. For an organization that wants to take a command and control approach to things, social media are scary. I imagine that the idea of letting actual people simply talk about Houston on their site was too much for the CVB.

And so the GHCVB’s failure to do the obvious and build on what HIWI started to create a kick-ass site about Houston is not surprising. Just very disappointing.

As for results… well, ask a Houstonian about our taxpayer supported marketing organization, and chances are he or she will have no clue what they’re doing - though the abominable “Space City, a City of Infinite Possibilities” slogan might come to mind. (And those of you outside of Houston - have the efforts of our CVB reached you?)

Meanwhile, HIWI has inspired a photo show and a book, and my local hardware store is selling t-shirts and mugs from the campaign. Another group has created a site and movie about Houston.

All the elements for a great social media campaign are in place. I wonder if the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau will wake up and get on board?

How do you use social media as a marketing tactic? That’s what lots of people are trying to sort out, and there’s no established best practices or simple answers. Marketers are still experimenting and learning what works and what doesn’t. A big part of the challenge, of course, is that social media are fundamentally about people connecting with people for their own reasons.

That’s relevant and valuable for marketers. But there are still plenty of marketing activities that don’t fit with social media in obvious ways, and one of them is generating sales leads.

And so I read Valeria Maltoni’s recent MarketingProfs Daily Fix piece, Throw Social Media in the Mix for Lead Generation, with some interest:

While one can definitely use social media tools to nurture leads, the question remains if it is viable for finding leads in the first place. The first question is where to go to have a highly targeted environment to prospect. Will that be the same place where all your competitors are? I believe in integration, so the interest created by a social media tool should be augmented and supported by an invitation that entices people to check you out and buy your product or service (what marketers call pull).

…

When using social media tools, you will need to develop an equivalent for people to signal to you that they are raising their hand to talk about business. Embed a call to action button at the end of your blog posts, for example, that provides readers with a choice: link here for further reading on this topic or click here to talk to us about a need you have or a problem we can help you solve.

Which means, of course, using social media as what they are: ways of fostering connections and community among individuals. This makes business sense: a company whose people are knows in online communities will be a place that people turn when they are ready to make purchases.

But I’m not sure I’d call that lead generation, because it doesn’t lend itself to the kind of process definition and analysis that make traditional lead generation techniques quantifiable and accountable. As one of David Reich observes in a comment:

It’s not very scientific, I know. But I’m not sure how else to do it at this point. If you approach it as simply promotional for lead-generation purposes, you may as well just take out a banner ad.

He’s right. Social media are unlikely to ever fill the role of a lead generation program: delivering qualified leads to a sales organization for action. Yes, social media activities will bring new customers in. They will help keep customers. They will help companies understand their customers better.

But true lead generation? I don’t see it. What do you think?

Yes, that title is a bit like “ice cubes in hell,” but why Apple is so averse to blogs and other social media and whether they should change is an endlessly popular topic; a recent comment on it comes from Mack Collier at The Viral Garden. Mack writes:

But how did embracing blogging help Dell and Microsoft? In both cases, it helped change the conversation that we were having about each company. Dell went from being aloof to human when they stopped ignoring bloggers during Dell Hell, and started engaging us in our space. Microsoft went from being the ‘Evil Empire’, to being human once thousands of their employees started blogging, and Robert Scoble started Channel 9. Gates should still be sending Scoble a royalty check on the goodwill that he helped build for Mr. Softie.

In both cases, blogging helped Dell and Microsoft better connect with its customers and the conversation we were having about each company changed a bit. But does Apple really want or need its conversation to change?

Here’s the question I like to ask. If you had ten minutes trapped in an elevator with Steve Jobs, how would you pitch him on Apple social media strategies?

It’s hard to make the case that Apple needs to change right now. Financial results? Good. Customer loyalty? Excellent. Reputation for innovation? Solid. Adoption by new users? Accelerating. So… maybe blogging at Apple is a problem looking for a solution. And I don’t thing we’ll see a Steve Jobs blog ever (other than the fake one).

But could Apple benefit from other kinds of blogging and general opening of the gates through social media? How about a blog from the team working on the iPhone SDK to build community among those who want to develop iPhone apps? How about a blog from the people behind the iWork suite that lets us see what they’re thinking and how they want to build a rival to MS Office - and let them know whether it’s working at the user level? I think there are lots of opportunities for Apple farther down in the organization.

The question is - do they need it? Here’s an alternative thought: one of Apple’s strengths is the ability to respond to user needs instead of stated user desires. Consider the iPhone. It’s a rethinking of how smart phones work. It’s not, however, what you’d come up with if you took users of Windows Mobile devices, Palms, and Blackberries and asked them to explain what irritates them about those devices.

I’m a former Win Mobile user (now with an iPhone). I would have talked about placement of keys and menu structure and all kinds of things that are probably useful user feedback when you’re operating with the paradigm of making a better Win Mobile phone. You wouldn’t necessarily get an iPhone out of that feedback… and yet when I got my iPhone my reaction “Finally! Someone got it right.”

So maybe Apple should be playing to its strengths and just keep listening to other conversations out there - where you learn things like “web browsing on these things is just awful” or “the keyboard just doesn’t work right” - and then come back with products that nobody expected, but that fit the needs they perhaps couldn’t even articulate well.

I offer that as food for thought, not an answer. Should Apple blog? As someone immersed in social media I find myself saying “yes!” immediately. Why should they do it? What benefit would they get? Those are harder questions.

They’re good questions, though and point to the ongoing difficulty of measuring the ROI of social media. These are thing to think about when talking to any company about blogging.